Mystery Museum

Materialises.

Done in about 3 and a half days- (stark contrast to the current book unfortunately).
I loved the chance to do some older fantasy sort of pictures for kids.
A direction I'd like to go.

(A shame so much was cropped out and shaded out on the back- again doing the front and back in an afternoon before I knew what words were going to be on the back.)

At the launch on Tuesday a lot of the kids said how much they loved my illustrations and how close the drawings were to their ideas
...which is a relief.
The stories the kids did were very interesting to try drawing.

The launch was one of the most lavish I've ever seen with pastries everywhere!

Bottersnikes and Gumbles

A long time ago I longed to work on a version of  the Bottersnikes and Gumbles story .
Then a few supanovas back I met some guys in sydney who were working on a series.
 ....and nothing.

Did a few pen scribbles the other night-(amongst the other scribbles)
looks like the bottersnike is a vindictive one- sitting on a jam jar of gumbles- with what could only be a discarded take away vindaloo container nearby.

Looks grim for those gumbles.

A Very Dalek Christmas

Idea for Dalek Christmas cards or a book while sitting at my table at Supanova

Brisbane Supanova 2015

Some pictures while I was sitting there-

Splash

Love

Pac man infestation

Home entertainment

10pm -Nothing on TV- so sat and thought-
"I know I'll try a bit of cutout animation with Dragonframe"
45 minutes later.... Taadaa!    (I run out of steam)
Note all the things being accidentally shifted and not positioned back is my laziness- Dragonframe has modes that allow you to realign stuff but I just wantedto push on and see how it might look anyway.

Sketches while watching....

......watching Manga Studio tutorials.

Man the pen feel is so much better than photoshop- you can go from superthin/hairline to thick like a paintbrush can.(much thinner and far better than photoshop)

Photoshop you are so dropped- I'll finish the book I'm currently doing in it - but after that......
seeya.

Quickly added Christmas Cheer

I bought Dragonframe- a stop motion program.
Man it is so cool.
There's a lot of the stop motion craft I don't know-
especially camera stuff- but I can easily see that so much has been thought out in the program- a weird and novel  delight to see in software.
I think the beauty of stop motion is that even if it is "craptastic" - somehow watching it you forgive any technical deficiencies.
Anyway- makes me feel like a kid again....
which is nice.

Also bought Autodesk sketchbook- I only have photoshop CS5 but as a drawing program it sucks mightily- primarily because of the appalling jaggies/aliasing/stepping as it reads your pen stroke.
Hadn't occurred to me how singularly bad it is until I've recently tried:
Sketchbook
Mischief
Manga Studio
Painter
and none of them have the same problem/suck so much.

Actually sketchbook has piqued my interest in concept art again- and plain drawing - so again excited to give it a go with the new tools.

Did a very quick replacement dinosaur for the banner.
Added a hat for christmas.

Night doodlin

I need a real job- if anyone has one.

Kind of getting a revival of a desire to do animation....

I didn't plan or think about that penguin/duck one I posted - I just did it- didn't really think about timing- so some of the pauses are short/wrong/wrong beat  etc.

Still there's a a lot of enjoyment and immediacy about it....
even if the light flickers /things done wrong etc ( a lot of craft to learn with the stop motion I guess.)
Kind of reminds me of the stuff I did as a kid  trying to do animation.

Struggling with the Little Bad Wolf book- at least struggling to achieve the dream suggested by my roughs.
Must not get hung up on the roughs.
Must stay loose with the backgrounds while I'm clarifying them.



Anyway- some doodles- 25 minutes of noodling.....

Fun with a duck

Some of the hurried images for Mystery Museum

Mystery Museum Mk2

Another attempt at the cover. Also a very fast attempt/idea for a back cover.
Both need a bit of photoshop love I'm afraid but ...here they are...
Had thought to do a page of shading/dark/vignette in watercolour and composit it over both in pshop.
Speaking of pshop I need to pull my finger out and learn manga studio etc so i can leave pshop behind-
I hate it.

Mystery Museum

Warg woman

Highlight of this for  me is the colour of the wargs snout believe it or not.

Quetzalcoatl

Did a bit more on that Dragon

The 'pre sketch' from Book Expo-
I did a bit more while sitting at my Caba Creative trail stand  (when I wasn't making the fish hat.)

Fish Hat

Caba Creative Trail

Well I'm going to be at the Caba Creative Trail on Saturday.
I am in spot 56.
Mysteriously named "artist".

Book expo- Large drawings

Book Expo drawings and paintings

 A few unfinished ones here- ones I sort of started then gave up
or thought  "this bit has to dry" and put it aside then never came back to it.

 A bit rude this....but then if its good enough for Norman Lindsay to do these sort of things.....

Book Expo Australia